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5 Small Business Tweaks That Will Save You Your Sanity

As a business owner, staying on task and ahead of schedule will directly determine whether your company will sink or swim. One of the biggest problems within companies today is small inconsistencies that turn into large problems in the future. Once they get to that point they are even harder to fix because no one really remembers where the problem started in the first place. Use this article as a direct guide to help keep your employees motivated and honest with their work on a daily bases.

Give constructive criticism, but don’t run them into the ground

This is the number one reason employees would ever be dishonest about an incident happening because of how they are directly treated by their employer. Nine times out of 10 employees will shy away from you and try avoiding confrontation at all costs, even if it hurts the company. It has been proven that good support to people who do something wrong has an overall better effect that the opposite. Say things like “that’s not quite right, here try doing this instead” then following up with “you are giving great effort; just remember to turn in your work at the end of the day”. Starting or ending the statement with a positive feedback will almost guarantee that the employee will get a sense of acceptance and want to try to impress you in the long run. You can also use gamification examples and elearning to implement new and unexpected ways of training employees on a specific processes that may be hard to grasp initially.

Show them the light at the end of the tunnel

Show some incentive or a reason to do better at work. It can be either profitable or just recognition throughout the workplace. Some great ideas for profitable incentives could be things like a pair of baseball tickets, a bigger bonus at the end of the term, or even just something as simple as lunch on a Friday. If you do not have extra money for incentives give your employees something they can be proud of. For example you could have an employee recognition program, such as employee of the month. It leads to good office morale and motivates employees to do better work.

Feed the hungry

It was touched on in the step above, but if you have the revenue to do it, people love free food. For instance, it might be easier to rally the troops for that 2:30 p.m. meeting if they know there will be free donuts and coffee available. Also as a side note, caffeine will be your best motivator. Whether you can afford to buy coffee for everyone once a week or even get a vending machine that has cheap caffeine sources in it, caffeine will help give your employees that small energy boost they need to finish out the day.

Trick them into thinking they are not working

One of the easiest motivators will occur without the employee even knowing it. Be spontaneous and change things up around the office. Instead of having your weekly meeting in the small boring office, try having it outside or renting out a hotel suite once a month. Another great example would be let them all work from home one day and only require them to participate in a free conference call. This works well because employee will feel like they are not at work and the creative juices start to flow, hence making them more productive.

Let them be heard

If you really want your company to thrive, let your employees know that what they do has a direct impact on the outcome of something major. Give them something to work for and be proud of. There are many ways of doing this, including having a meeting where they give suggestions on different topics to better help or change the company. Also, sitting an employee down that may be struggling more than the others and explaining to them the overall importance of that person’s job may help boost their self-motivation. Showing that there job can directly affect the lives of others is a good motivator that will help them to work harder.

Whether you own your own small business or manage a company with 10000 employees, if they do not perform the way they should, nothing will get done. Use the above steps as a general guide to help better motivate your employees in a more positive manner.

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The idea for Small Business Can comes from an Ulster Bank initiative when we went and talked to hundreds of businesspeople and asked them about the types of business supports they most valued. The majority said that they valued the insights of other businesspeople the most. We came up with smallbusinesscan.com, a site run by businesspeople for businesspeople. Read more...